The First and The Last
by DevDev
Summary: A bit of an AU where I insert Claire into season 5. There is an oddness about her smile now.


///

_Go on and tear it up,_

_black and cold with the dust,_

'_cause I believed in the lord,_

_but he don't show up anymore_

///

_The freighter explodes. This is what's left._

///

Wordlessly, Sawyer takes Claire away from the others. It's a quiet day and they've only flashed just the once, so he figures it's the island's way of telling him that it is time. The trees are still when he grasps her amazingly white arm into his dirtied hand (he marks her) and leads her into a bend of green trees. She sits down on some stump of a cut up tree, its other half lost and gone into the jungle. She sits there and she waits.

They are alone, just like he planned it; except now that they're here, he doesn't know how to tell her.

She looks up at him, blind trust in those baby blue eyes of hers. It's this look that makes him fidget and start pacing the jungle floor. It strikes him that he'd rather keep that blind trust and faith than ruin the whole thing, slash her little picturesque vision of her son to pieces. He'd rather lie to her than hurt her. Well, there's a first time for everything, ain't there?

But he won't chicken out, not when he's come this far. Hell, he's even rehearsed it a couple times ever since they found her passed out on the beach; clutching Charlie's old ring in her hands. It's something he wouldn't want hidden from him, anyway. She deserves the truth.

"Why are we here, Sawyer?"

He stops pacing, stops fidgeting. This is important and he doesn't want to do it half assed. He looks her in her eyes.

"Something went wrong." He supposes it's her turn to fidget now, because she does. She uncrosses her legs and folds her hands together and then apart again and again. Swallowing, he continues. "When I jumped the copter, Aaron was on the freighter. He was okay, Sun had him last I heard. But when I got to the shore, it looked like there had been an explosion."

"But they were on the helicopter by then, right?" There's still that blind trust amongst the nervous fidgeting as she looks at him and it kills him to do this, to deliver the final blow.

"They helicopter was running low on fuel. Everyone was on the freighter when it exploded, Claire. I'm sorry."

He can see her eyes get real wide and she stops breathing. She is stock-still and he fears she might never breathe again. But then she crumples. Like a rag doll, she goes limp, losing color as she slides down the stump of the broken tree. Her hands aren't white anymore.

She doesn't sob and it surprises him. Claire's crying is noiseless, her frail body shaking instead.

He figures he should comfort her but he doesn't know how so he just lets her cry.

Claire stands after only a few moments of lying in the dirt. Wipes her cheeks with the back of her hands and sniffs just twice. Her face is hard and it almost scares him. Looking at him is the face of a stranger. Someone who has lost everything and everyone, but still has the burden of life left.

"We should get back," she says, smiling tightly. And he follows her back where they came from.

There's a sort of oddness about her smile now.

_Aaron is dead. (He is not coming back)._

///

There's something a little bit funny about an empty world. Claire understands that's all she has left now, an empty world. And with the flashes that pop up at random on her and the others, there's just survival.

It feels a little bit like after Charlie died. When they were stomping through the jungle following Locke's lead, the feeling of bareness and blankness had weighed heavily over her body then too. But there had been Aaron swaddled in her arms then, warm against her chest. She had pulled herself together for him.

Now there is no one for Claire to pull herself together for. So she just follows.

When it rains, it feels like that time Eko baptized her and Aaron so that they'd be together always.

_They aren't together now._

///

Claire rips down the swing set when the flashes stop and they're caught in Dharmaville, circa whenever.

Sawyer manages to keep her from working with the excuse that she is his wife along for the cause and all that yadda yadda. She nods her head like an obedient child, her dead eyes tight and convincing. Sawyer supposes this is the best thing for her, God knows if she'd be able to actually do any sort of work anyway. But he regrets his decision when he sees her attacking the silver and red swing set, intent on destruction.

Maybe he's given her too much time, too much time to sit around with nothing but her thoughts for company. Maybe he hasn't given her anything at all.

"Hey!"

It's dark and his shout startles her, wide eyes filled with guilt before she resumes her attack. So he yells out again.

This time she stops.

Her fists are red and God only knows what her feet look like, considering she's been kicking the crap out of rusted tin. Her cheeks are flushed, her curls knotted.

"What!" she yells back. And then, after a moment of silence, softer, "I thought you were asleep."

"I was 'til you woke me up with this noise." He sits on a swing before looking up at her and asking, "What do you think you're doing?"

"I can't look at this stupid thing any longer," and this answer comes out through her gritted white teeth, as if it pains her to actually speak the words. And then she starts pacing, as if even seeing him on the swing has her blood boiling.

"Sit down a second, will you? You're driving me insane."

She sits on his lap.

"When I said sit, I didn't mean – " She cuts off his words with a searing kiss. It's hot and angry. When she bites down on his tongue, drawing blood, he can't help but kiss back. But as she squirms against his thighs, he knows it's nothing but wrong and pushes her away. Stands. Starts to walk back to their house.

"I thought maybe it was time we started acting like husband and wife!" she hollers at his back. He doesn't reply, but keeps walking steadily on.

When he wakes up the next morning, the swing set is a pile of twisted metal. He looks down at Claire's sleeping form. Her fingernails are bloody.

_Did Aaron bleed when he died?_

///

One afternoon, after Sawyer leaves for work, Claire cuts off her hair. It starts with a short trim, but there's something about seeing those yellow strands on the tiled floor that make her want to keep going (and going and going). He had her hair, but he doesn't now.

She sweeps the floor and throws the yellow strands in the garbage. And when Sawyer comes home hours later, she's still holding the scissors in her fist, blue eyes trained on the garbage can.

_She wishes she could cut off her pain_.

///

"I don't believe in God anymore, Sawyer."

He looks at her. She is sitting at the kitchen table, sunlight hitting the top of her head, white blonde ringlets only striking her collarbone. Her eyes are puffy and red, her voice dry and cracked. She says this as if she's just talking about the weather.

"Sweetheart, you certainly ain't the first. And you won't be the last." He waits a moment; her vacant stare running through him like ice water. He asks her what she wants for breakfast.

"It doesn't matter."

He makes her waffles. She doesn't eat them.

_Aaron will never eat waffles._

///

Claire ruins the ruse for all of them.

It's been plaguing her for days, but it feels like weeks. She can't sleep any longer; there is no refuge in sleep with haunting dreams of burning chopper blades and suffocating smoke and dizzying oceans. Sawyer snores softly beside her, unfazed by her strange behavior. It is a still night, not even the trees sway with the light breeze flitting through the mass of houses. It is the perfect night for the thing she needs to do.

She forgets her shoes, but doesn't go back for them. She forgets a blanket, but doesn't go back for that either. She won't go back for anything now.

Amy doesn't lock her door, not with that gigantic security system that cloaks this little village like a blanket. That's the easiest part. The hardest is keeping baby Ethan quiet.

But he is a good baby (or so Amy says) and he doesn't fuss when Claire takes him from his crib haphazardly. He's such a good baby, in fact, that he doesn't start crying until Claire is beyond the columns that create the security system (she stole the code right from Sawyer's pocket).

She doesn't attempt to soothe him.

His cries echo in the surrounding trees, his tiny fists flailing against Claire's chest. His skin is red and blotchy from his crying; his forehead wrinkled with distress. She stops for a moment and studies him. He is so very different from her baby, with his dark hair and dark lashes. In an instant she can see him as an adult, standing in the rain watching her pregnant belly with animal like lust. She can see him dying, bullets pounding into his chest, a black hooded figure holding a gun.

Claire _hates_ this baby.

She hates him, but cannot bring herself to crush his skull with a nearby stone or smother his cries with her hands. Instead, she starts walking towards the ocean.

_This will save them all_.

///

"Claire! Fuck. CLAIRE!"

One by one, Sawyer can see the lights of each house ignite, bright against the darkness of the night. A woman is screaming hysterically, but her words are too crazed and jumbled; he can hear footsteps and loud voices.

Someone has taken baby Ethan.

There is no question in Sawyer's mind of who took the baby and he hurries out of his house, easily blending in with the crowd. His only advantage is that he knows exactly where she will go.

If anything happens, Sawyer will blame himself. He should have seen the signs. At first, Claire had slept for hours a day and now she hardly slept at all. She spent hours staring at nothing, spent days away from everyone, clutched her sides with a death grip if she came within ten feet of Amy and Ethan. He should have taken care of her, should have tried to help her. Now it might be too late.

_(It's always been too late_.)

///

They meet at the beach.

Claire isn't holding the baby; instead Ethan lies in the sand, clad only in his white diaper and he is crying loudly. She sits a few feet away, her thin knees tightly clutched to her chest, body shaking.

Sawyer tentatively steps forward from the trees, but his caution is useless and Claire's head snaps back almost immediately. Standing abruptly, she moves to stand over the baby, but not in a protective stance.

And he knows this isn't going to end well.

He doesn't have time to even say her name before she's lifting the baby and walking forward into the rising tide of the ocean, stomping through it as though she is asleep.

There are no other choices here and he moves forward too, running hard to reach her before they are swept away. His jeans are soaked through, sea salt sprayed against his lips and hair when he finally gets to her. No words are spoken, but he grabs her shoulders and pulls her against his chest. With Ethan still screaming in her arms, this is enough to stop her for the moment.

"I have to do this," she cries, her voice muffled.

Breathing hard, his mouth against the top of her head, he pleads, "please don't." She spins then, Ethan's tiny fists flailing against his chest and her cheeks are so very wet with tears. Her blue eyes, so usually calm and at peace, are wide and frantic. She looks crazy and it scares him.

"But you don't. Please don't, sweetheart, please."

And she crumples then, falls into the rushing tide like a puppet with cut strings. She sobs and shakes as the baby wails in her outstretched arms. And when he reaches for Ethan, she doesn't protest.

Maybe this is the part where he messes up most of all, turning his back on her to place the baby safely in the sand and away from the water. Maybe he should have lifted both of them. Maybe he should have forced her back with him. Maybe maybe maybe.

Claire is gone.

With his heart beating rapidly in his chest, entirely consumed with fear, he dives back into the silver ocean. Like knives, the water and sand are rough against his clothing but he won't turn back now. He swears he can see the blonde of Claire's hair, the white of her skin so very close to his rough hands.

He swears. He swears he can see her.

But she is gone. And so is he.

///

"I don't believe in God, Sawyer."

"Sweetheart, you certainly ain't the first. And you won't be the last."

The end.


End file.
